Digital Banter

Stock targeting in ad channels like Google, Facebook, and TikTok may not be the best option for B2B companies. It can be difficult to accurately target your ideal customer profile and personas. We've tried working around these limitations for years, but it's led to many failed tests, with the exception of LinkedIn.

Recently, we've been experimenting with B2B targeting tools and the results have been astounding. We're now able to focus on where our audience consumes content, rather than being limited to Paid Search and LinkedIn.

Join us this week as we share our experience with these tools and how they've been a game changer for our B2B marketing efforts.

It grinds our gears that brands are always looking to cut costs and force as much of their budget into media dollars as possible.  We see them cutting tech, creative & agencies.  But cutting from the wrong area can be detrimental to the efficiency of your media budget. Its ok to pull from media spend and keep the tools you need. Here is some food for thought as you are looking at being more efficient with your spending:

Don't cut creative: Regular creative testing and refreshes is super important!  You cannot scale campaigns without scaling creative.  Creative fatigue leads to less efficiency.  Its worth spending less on media to have adequate creative
3rd Party Data providers are helpful:  In B2B its almost impossible to reach your customers outside of LinkedIn & paid search without a data provider/audience tool.  The separate line item for data is important. Trust me.  Also, Dear Finance Folks... you can either pay for good data... or have those data fees hidden within google & Facebook where you can pay 3x for the audience and then 100x for the poor performance.  You choose.
Measurement tech drives efficiency:  If you are running on more than 3 channels, its time to graduate from Google Analytics.  GA4 sucks anyways.  If you or your agency can't improve results by the 3% of media you are spending on tech.. well that's a bigger problem.  Being informed, helps drive efficiency.
You get what you pay for with agencies: If you want to run performance max campaigns on autopilot and not give a crap about lead quality... /rant.

In this episode of Digital Banter, we discussed the game-changing technology of chat GPT, which uses artificial intelligence to create human-like responses. Chat GPT has the potential to revolutionize the world of marketing by automating tasks such as content creation, keyword and audience research, and copywriting. It can also improve marketing strategies and increase efficiency. However, it's important to consider the ethical implications of using chat GPT and to add a human element to the content it generates.

As we move into 2023, chat GPT is expected to have a major impact on the search engine marketing industry, with the current shift towards social searches, actual search engines, and now the introduction of AI & chat GPT for information gathering. Marketers will need to adapt their content strategy to be even more focused on social with likely less focus on traditionally SEO.

To get started with chat GPT, try using it to create outlines or foundational material for blog posts, generate social media posting content, and create paid search copy. As always, it's important to stay up-to-date with chat GPT and other AI technologies and to carefully consider the ethical implications of using these tools. Stay ahead of the curve in the world of modern marketing with chat GPT!

Yearly planning is hopefully over at this point for most companies.  Now what do you have to to do turn that plan into action?  Most companies really struggle and things don't seem to get moving until Q2 or sometimes even later. 

This weeks episode we talk through how to get shit moving, and its easier than you may think. At least on paper.  It come down to alignment & ownership.  Here are 4 things you need to know:

1) Create team alignment on goals +KPIs. (Duh).. but the reality is this should be done already.  Drive revenue.. lets go!
2) Understand the trickle down of measurement and how to report up to a larger goal.  Revenue is the goal -> what is your contribution?
3) Prioritize Effort vs Impact.  Place your bets, and lets get the show on the road.
4) Work in parallel paths.  In order to do this you need to have trust and ownership. This is why unmotivated team members and micromanagers simply don't work.

B2B is known for creative that is literally the worst.  Stunning pictures of Digital E-Books, that you can be so lucky to have if you would just provide your business email address.

B2B companies will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a few pieces of creative that simply don't get your message across, drive crappy MQLs and don't make an impact.

Here are 3 takeaways for better b2b creative.

1) Every good story has a hero.  Build a hero into your story and show off how they win.
2) B2B buyers are people.  People buy with emotions & justify with logic.  Your messaging should first trigger an emotional response, then you can support with data.
3) Fail Fast + Test & Learn.  Hard truth in this is that you need to invest more in creative.  Don't be afraid to pull back media dollars to invest more in creative.

Balancing quick wins & long term growth continues to be the biggest struggle for marketers.  Especially for investor backed high growth companies.

With current economic challenges, and less budget how can we continue to innovate?

1) For early tests where the goal is to create proof of concept, focus on low cost tests such as messaging & content.
2)  Develop ways to operationalize tests that have effectively scaled (So these can be at full steam when budgets ramp again.  (The average length of a recession is only 10 months)
3) Double down on customer insights.  In most cases, talking to customers is free.  When times are tough, dive deep and learn more about your customers that can be used to help drive product innovation & messaging.

Building brand trust is one of the most difficult things to do in marketing.  The reality is, customers know where and when they are trying to be sold to.  

People trust people, not brands.

So how do brands create messaging that is believable & not bias.  Well it comes down to delivering actual value without asking for anything in return.

Check out this week's podcast as we dive deep into how to build trust and what makes someone trust a brand.

Historically, our good friends in sales have believed that the purpose of marketing is for us to provide materials for them so that they an be better at sales.  As marketers, we have actually relied on sales to do marketing.

In recent years, B2B buying has fundamentally changed.  B2B buyers want to buy on their own terms in the same way they would purchase any other product.  Aka.. they will reach out when they are ready.

This means that we as marketers need to make resources more regularly available to buyers before they come in contact with sales.

In this podcast we jump into the specifics of how to repurpose common content pieces typically used by sales to drive demand.

Well, we often talk about how we are tired of seeing marketers boil their efforts down to "high yield" demand capture activities.  Its time to talk about the worst of them all, Branded Search.

Agencies for years have come up with 50 different excuses to show the value of branded search, and while most are somewhat valid, it has led to a massive over investment.  As marketers we need to be more focused on what drove a branded search, rather than capturing it.

Unfortunately, branded search will almost always be a necessity because as marketers we respect our executives wishes to "run a competitive campaign".  Join us this week as we discuss how to get the most out of this necessary evil. We talk through insights that can be gathered from branded search to help inform other marketing activities that actually drive those searches.  We also will teach you a few ways to save some money that you can throw back at some prospecting efforts.

There have been a lot of debate recently if creating demand &  driving brand awareness are the same thing.  In all honestly, when I first started really studying demand gen, I saw it as the first logical reasoning for brands to move up funnel into more "branding" activities... Well truthfully, they really are not the same thing at all.  

Join Zach and James this week as we talk about the key differences between brand & demand and how both are necessary for an effective forward thinking marketing strategy.